Are you a "problem player"?

[Rel]

To solve: have your character/party take a complete left turn between adventures on the path and abandon the path for something else...

"Mr. DM - last time we were by this place you mentioned something about there being a ruined temple nearby...we're gonna go check it out."

"Mr. DM - we're at a harbour town, right? How much will it cost us to buy a boat and hire crew for it for a couple of months...2000 g.p.? Right. Done. We're gonna sail up north and raid some Viking villages!"

Your DM can either handle this or he can't; and if he can't may I respectfully suggest it's time for a new DM.

I respectfully suggest that this depends a lot on the group in question.

I almost never buy modules and I usually don't plan more than about 2 sessions ahead in the campaign anyway, so it would be fine by me if a player suggested this. In fact I've had almost this exact scenario happen to me and I just rolled with it.

However if the group has mutally agreed that they are going to play the "adventure path" set of modules then it is pretty rude in my opinion for a player to try and hijack the direction the game is going. The GM and/or other players have invested some money and probably quite a bit of time in preparing for upcoming adventures. Taking a "complete left turn" forces the abandonment of that investment or else simply telling you "Ok, your character leaves the party and goes off to fight vikings. What's your new character for the adventure path campaign going to be like?"

That being said, I think it's perfectly fine for the player to express to the GM that he would like to see aspects of his character background and motivations be tied into the agreed upon set of modules the group is playing. One reason that I rarely buy modules is that I spend so much time customizing them to my group to add these sorts of ties that, in the end, I'd have had an easier time just writing it from scratch.

 

[Cryptos]

Unfortunately if I get the opportunity to game, I usually wind up as the DM/GM/ST.

If I wind up as the player, I'm the wild-eyed "I have a plan" person that is thinking not only of a solution to the current encounter but a way to amass influence, information, items, technology, power, allies, etc to give me more opportunities to concoct an unconventional solution. Even inconsequential items randomly placed, I'll look at and possibly use on the spot or collect for later use.

Combined with my lack of forgiveness and how little I like to have enemies at large and able to do me harm, I suppose I can have a tendency to derail things for more linear GMs.

For GMs that react and thrive on those sorts of things, I create plot hooks and complications that go on for days.

I'm the person who's thinking ahead from level one to the day when we can take down the local Imperial Moff who's ruling the sector with a durasteel fist, building things up to the point where we offload a legion of tiny, cheap hover droids with stun blasters and laser cutters into the ventillation system in his fortress, waltz through it and shoot him in the head in the middle of his command center just as he starts to open his mouth to begin his villain's monologue.

Introduce an enemy to me in advance at your peril.

Just for fun, have me see that enemy doing something to women, children, or the poor and sick. I won't stop until he's dead in the most humiliating and certain way possible.

I'm the person who recognizes that the scientist offering to defect has just lied to us, is probably setting up a trap, and proceeds to spring the trap anyway, just to make sure we get the scientist anyway, or at the very least prevent him from staying in the enemies' employ, by doing some crazy-@$$ thing like launching myself out of the space station airlock with him and hoping that our ship is where I think it is, just outside.

You'll have to toss all those encounters you planned on the way back to the hangar and off the space station. But, hey, cool visual... and you still have a decent chance to take me out if you're feeling vindictive. That pretty much sums it up.

I'm pretty much the John Crichton (Farscape) of roleplaying. Phyrric victories in hopeless situations, "so crazy it works" plans, "what the hell is he doing now?" actions, and making enemies bigger enemies than they should have been appears to be my thing. Irreverence and sarcasm included. I regret that I don't get to play more often.

 

[roguerouge]

I wasn't. But I became one. Due to lifestyle changes and the loss of three members, I went from being one of a majority of players with world-building, debate, and brainstorming preferences to a loud minority in a "let's just get to the fight" group. It's taken some time to adjust.

 

[Nai_Calus]

I make characters incompatible with the general jerkiness of characters made by my group - My current character is a Chaotic Good Bard 4/Swashbuckler 5 who believes in personal freedom and Doing The Right Thing, To The Nine Hells With Whatever Laws Get Broken In The Process. He's merciful, compassionate and kind.

The rest of the party is an amoral TN Battle Sorceror who might drop, a NG Dwarf Fighter played by the guy who doesn't RP and is thus not at all a help to my character's moral standpoints. We originally had a CE Rogue who was pretending to not be CE, though my character suspected. His player retired him because he 'didn't get along well with others' in favour of bringing in a LN Marshal that ignores every single bit of advice on playing a leader type the PHBII gave for the class. >_>;

So now I get to be the jerk because my character, due to his Chaotic alignment and a simple 'Uh, I've been with this group since the beginning, you've been here five minutes, exactly WHO put you in charge?' philosophy, is obviously not at all going to play along with Mr. I Own This Group Now. My character's already been attacked by the guy, so it's not going to go well. But, character wouldn't back down and play nice, neither am I. It's funny, he got along with the guy he suspected of being CE better than the guy who's not evil. But there was a shared alignment factor in the previous guy, I suppose. (My character spent several years living on the Outer Planes, so alignment is actually a meaningful concept to him in-game.)

I also don't always know exactly what I should do, since I'm tied for player who's been doing it the least long(But the other guy has a powergamer mentality and thus optimizes, he's the one that doesn't RP. I just make characters and take what they would take and mechanical perfection be damned). Doesn't help that nobody in the group is usually willing to offer advice even when I ask directly because apparently this would be some horrible sin, so I end up doing something stupid sometimes and getting yelled at for it, or just simply sitting there not knowing which course of action I should take and which would just plain be doomed from the start and trying to think as fast as possible. <_>

I'm doormat-y sometimes because I've been doing it the least long and have developed a 'well we're not going to do what I suggest anyway so why even bother pushing for it' mentality. So I don't speak up and insist on something often enough, both in and out of character. I've gotten better in-character, but ooc ugh.

Since I don't optimize and don't push I end up too often not being all that useful next to the powergamers, which just frustrates both of us since I end up being the weakest member of the group in terms of what I can do.

I resent the things that annoy me too much. I'm annoyed that the Marshal attacked my character, even if the damage was non-lethal and inspired by my character calling him a coward, to the point of pondering my character's ability to take the other character in a fight or if it would be better to wait until he trances and CDG him. I won't of course, I'll just retire my character once we're out of the current dungeon if he doesn't improve, but my character can't work with this guy without it ending badly, as already demonstrated by the attack, which came with an insult and a threat to have it not be with the flat of the blade next time. And I'm letting myself get resentful over this because he's entitled to his character too, even if the most IC thing for me to do would be to just have my character leave. Except I like my character and don't want to retire him. So metagaming, which I hate, and resentment.

Which brings me to my problem of not being able to think of reasons for my character to stay with people that annoy him rather than go off on his own merry little way. I had the same problem in a previous campaign after a character was introduced by way of poisoning my character(The Fortitude Save against said poison that came up a Nat20 was the best 'Oh yeah? Well eat this' die roll EVER) and I had to metagame to hell and back why exactly my character was staying with someone who had tried to poison him. <_>

I'm also too attached to my characters. <_> And I slow things down by wanting to RP stuff and have our characters talk and want to develop them. I want to develop my own character and I honestly want to know about the other characters as well. (Especially since, you know, if we actually KNEW each other I'd have an easier time with why my character stays with an obviously hostile other character.) So when everyone's all 'let's fast-forward to the dungeon' I'm the sole 'let's RP a bit on the way' vote, and end up trying to strike up conversations in the dungeon.

So yeah. I make annoying characters who stick too hard to their morals and I don't know/abuse the game enough to keep up and want to RP too much in a group that doesn't want to RP. I'm the problem player who's always clashing against the other players. ._.;

(I'm also guilty of the 'My background is half a page long, and that's the condensed version that glosses over stuff' thing, and my motivations aren't for physical stuff but for things that aren't likely to get touched on at all, and I let that annoy me too.)

 

[GlassJaw]

My group has dubbed me "The Rulesgiver".

I'm a rules lawyer, although I'd like to think I'm somewhat diplomatic about it. I'm not sure that being a rules lawyer makes you a "problem" player but that might be another whole discussion.

I'm also completely impartial. Regardless if the ruling helps the players or the DM, I call it like it is. This has led to a recurring quote at the table:

"The Rulesgiver giveth, the Rulesgiver taketh away."

 

[BlackMoria]

Unfortuately, my DMs consider me a 'problem' player. Not because of table behaviors, badwrongfun points of view, my attitude or anything.

Rather, if the DMs don't have multi-layer intrigues, I can unravel the adventure as to what is really going on in short order. If the DM is setting us up in some fashion, I can usually tell and pre-emient the betrayer or the bad guy manipulating us. If we are being setup to get screwed over, I can tell and pull off a reversal.

If the DM has thought of the three ways the party can get into the BBEG fortress of doom and covered his bases, I will come up with a fourth way that noone ever considered.

I will bypass obstacles and encounters with wild and sometime wacky plans, just when the DMs figures that there is no way the party can get past monster/device/encounter X without having to deal with it.

I treat every adventure lilke a virtual Rubik's cube to solve. If it is crazy enough to work, I will try it. Why approach a problem from a orthodox solution when a creative, imaginative would work better and be a whole lot more fun.

In short, its a shell game with me and the DMs. Unless you got enough shells and move them round fast enough, I will figure out which one the peas is under.

 

[C_M2008]

I make characters incompatible with the general jerkiness of characters made by my group - My current character is a Chaotic Good Bard 4/Swashbuckler 5 who believes in personal freedom and Doing The Right Thing, To The Nine Hells With Whatever Laws Get Broken In The Process. He's merciful, compassionate and kind.

The rest of the party is an amoral TN Battle Sorceror who might drop, a NG Dwarf Fighter played by the guy who doesn't RP and is thus not at all a help to my character's moral standpoints. We originally had a CE Rogue who was pretending to not be CE, though my character suspected. His player retired him because he 'didn't get along well with others' in favour of bringing in a LN Marshal that ignores every single bit of advice on playing a leader type the PHBII gave for the class. >_>;

So now I get to be the jerk because my character, due to his Chaotic alignment and a simple 'Uh, I've been with this group since the beginning, you've been here five minutes, exactly WHO put you in charge?' philosophy, is obviously not at all going to play along with Mr. I Own This Group Now. My character's already been attacked by the guy, so it's not going to go well. But, character wouldn't back down and play nice, neither am I. It's funny, he got along with the guy he suspected of being CE better than the guy who's not evil. But there was a shared alignment factor in the previous guy, I suppose. (My character spent several years living on the Outer Planes, so alignment is actually a meaningful concept to him in-game.)

I also don't always know exactly what I should do, since I'm tied for player who's been doing it the least long(But the other guy has a powergamer mentality and thus optimizes, he's the one that doesn't RP. I just make characters and take what they would take and mechanical perfection be damned). Doesn't help that nobody in the group is usually willing to offer advice even when I ask directly because apparently this would be some horrible sin, so I end up doing something stupid sometimes and getting yelled at for it, or just simply sitting there not knowing which course of action I should take and which would just plain be doomed from the start and trying to think as fast as possible. <_>

I'm doormat-y sometimes because I've been doing it the least long and have developed a 'well we're not going to do what I suggest anyway so why even bother pushing for it' mentality. So I don't speak up and insist on something often enough, both in and out of character. I've gotten better in-character, but ooc ugh.

Since I don't optimize and don't push I end up too often not being all that useful next to the powergamers, which just frustrates both of us since I end up being the weakest member of the group in terms of what I can do.

I resent the things that annoy me too much. I'm annoyed that the Marshal attacked my character, even if the damage was non-lethal and inspired by my character calling him a coward, to the point of pondering my character's ability to take the other character in a fight or if it would be better to wait until he trances and CDG him. I won't of course, I'll just retire my character once we're out of the current dungeon if he doesn't improve, but my character can't work with this guy without it ending badly, as already demonstrated by the attack, which came with an insult and a threat to have it not be with the flat of the blade next time. And I'm letting myself get resentful over this because he's entitled to his character too, even if the most IC thing for me to do would be to just have my character leave. Except I like my character and don't want to retire him. So metagaming, which I hate, and resentment.

Which brings me to my problem of not being able to think of reasons for my character to stay with people that annoy him rather than go off on his own merry little way. I had the same problem in a previous campaign after a character was introduced by way of poisoning my character(The Fortitude Save against said poison that came up a Nat20 was the best 'Oh yeah? Well eat this' die roll EVER) and I had to metagame to hell and back why exactly my character was staying with someone who had tried to poison him. <_>

I'm also too attached to my characters. <_> And I slow things down by wanting to RP stuff and have our characters talk and want to develop them. I want to develop my own character and I honestly want to know about the other characters as well. (Especially since, you know, if we actually KNEW each other I'd have an easier time with why my character stays with an obviously hostile other character.) So when everyone's all 'let's fast-forward to the dungeon' I'm the sole 'let's RP a bit on the way' vote, and end up trying to strike up conversations in the dungeon.

So yeah. I make annoying characters who stick too hard to their morals and I don't know/abuse the game enough to keep up and want to RP too much in a group that doesn't want to RP. I'm the problem player who's always clashing against the other players. ._.;

(I'm also guilty of the 'My background is half a page long, and that's the condensed version that glosses over stuff' thing, and my motivations aren't for physical stuff but for things that aren't likely to get touched on at all, and I let that annoy me too.)

I wish I had more players like you.

 

[Krensky]

I wish I had more players like you.

Same here.

 

[Noumenon]

I will bypass obstacles and encounters with wild and sometime wacky plans, just when the DMs figures that there is no way the party can get past monster/device/encounter X without having to deal with it.

That's the part I don't like as a DM -- it's like, why are you bypassing my fun, prepped encounters, because all that lies behind them is not-as-fun, not-as-prepped encounters? But the 4E DMG recognizes that "the Thinker" is a valid player type and suggests rewarding planning and "occasionally allowing a smart plan to cause a one-sided win" so thinkers can have their fun.

I just really don't see why my Thinker wanted to go stone shaping and scroll-of-disintegrating his way around the inverted ziggurat in White Plume Mountain -- how often do you really get to do a fight underwater, after all? When you got your reward, you'd have done something fun and different for it. When they went back to town for the scroll, I had another group come through the ziggurat and take the treasure. (They bartered it back later.)

I was a bad player with suspension of disbelief. When my DM introduced a town of dwarves oppressed by a crippling "barrel tax" that kept them from shipping beer, I complained and complained about the default D&D economy that meant this big tax nobody could afford was just a few coppers a mug. At level 7 all mundane prices are totally meaningless to a PC.

But who cares about the actual amount -- I should have just bought in to the narrative of "oppressive taxation." I realized why later on when I became the GM and told one of my players he was going to meet some drunken masters in that town. "Ooh, drinking is cheap there now with no barrel tax!" he said. I hadn't even recognized the narrative potential there because I'd basically philosophized the barrel tax into irrelevance and forgotten about it.

 

[Greg K]

Yeah, but in 1st edition people controlled their death by gingerly poking everything with a 10-foot pole and avoiding combat.

Not in any 1e game that I played in.

In 4E you go out like a hero in a fight you chose to get into.

Just like every pre 4e DND campaign that I have in dating back to 1e.